Setup quality grades
Why your desk trades less often than you might expect: every candidate setup is graded, then must clear independent evidence and positive-growth checks.
Before any trade is proposed, the engine scans the whole market and grades every candidate setup on structure, momentum alignment, liquidity, and cost. A managed entry must score at least 50/100, have no catastrophic quality defect, and trade in a market with at least $300,000 of current open interest on mainnet or $100,000 on testnet. Passing those floors is not an automatic trade: the setup must still be fresh, independently evidenced, portfolio-compatible, and have positive modeled net growth. US stock setups meet the same economic bar as crypto.
What the grade weighs
- Trend structure: is the setup aligned with the higher-timeframe direction, or fighting it?
- Entry location: chasing an extended move grades worse than entering at a reasonable pullback.
- Liquidity and cost: thin books, wide spreads, and punishing funding rates all pull a grade down; an edge eaten by costs is not an edge.
- Learned lessons: every closed loss is automatically analyzed and classified, and recurring loss patterns feed back into grading: a setup shape that keeps losing gets demoted from A. The desk literally learns from its own mistakes.
The detailed scoring weights remain part of the engine, while the admission boundary is explicit: score 50 plus $300,000 mainnet OI or $100,000 testnet OI are hard minimums. Every skipped setup appears in the decisions feed with its score and reason, and every trade that does happen carries its quality and OI stamp in the verdict trail.
What this means for you
- Quiet days are normal. If no fresh candidate has enough independent evidence and positive modeled growth, the desk trades nothing; that is an economic decision, not a malfunction.
- Frequency follows the market and the data. Directional, liquid markets need complete core order-book, open-interest, and carry evidence. Public trade flow and verified smart-money coverage improve ranking when available, but do not silently make an otherwise complete setup ineligible.
- The grade is not a win probability. It ranks setup cleanliness; realized edge and expected net growth decide whether mainnet funds may be risked.